After being troubled by the awkward atmosphere between him and Honoka, and being confused by the student body as a homosexual, Hikaru points Koremitsu towards the next girl he made a promise to. Koremitsu soon arrives at an elementary school where he meets a girl named Shiiko. Upon taking Koremitsu to an empty room, the fourth grade girl asks Koremitsu if he will take her virginity in Hikaru’s place. Completely astounded, Koremitsu glares right up at Hikaru and angerly questions him. Shiiko starts to pull down his pants but before Koremitsu could respond, Shiiko takes a picture.

With a devilish look on her face, Shiiko faces Koremitsu and declares to him.

“Become my dog.”

Welcome to Volume 3 of When Hikaru was on the Earth.

Shiiko is the troublemaker loli character out of Hikaru’s harem and despite looking like an innocent nine year old, she declares to take her revenge out on the grown-ups. Her targets are older men, as she refers to them “sparrows”, decieving them in order to make some money. Hikaru wants to prevent this from happening and Koremitsu gets pretty furious for being roped into Shiiko’s plans. The beginning interactions between Shiiko and Koremitsu involve getting into some sort of fight. But at the end of each confrontation, the underlying messages being said is the concept of innocence.

Shiiko believes that it is up to her to handle all the responsibilities and taking her revenge. Meanwhile, Koremitsu states to her, in rawest form, that she’s a brat and that should stay one. Looking past his harsh words, Koremitsu is right and he goes through the act of becoming her dog in order to convince her that she’s just a kid. However, Shiiko thinks otherwise. She tried opening her heart to others but people treated her unjustly, so she decided to not trust or rely on anyone else anymore. If something bad happened to you, wouldn’t you try to prevent it? In Shiiko’s case, that what she does. She takes advantage of her youthful charm, regarding older men as disgusting and perverted trash, and tries to make a profit out of them. Hikaru and Koremitsu tells her to stop, but she justifies her actions by using responsibilities such as taking care of her family, cleaning the house, and paying for the apartment.

The idea of female characters hating men has been done before, but Shiiko has a motivation for doing so. Around the middle of the light novel, the story introduces Shiiko’s enemy and we slowly get to discover her reasons why she wants to take revenge. It ties together why she became the way she is, the situation her family is in, and even her relationship with Hikaru. Part of this volume’s themes with relying on others also relates to the series’ central theme of love and adds another perspective on Hikaru’s character.

While the main story is happening, we do get more progression with our side characters. The developments have more of a comedic spin towards it, but it shows some key factors that will happen later on. We do get more development about Koremitsu’s parents and it does add to the argument of image, as Koremitsu’s parents are actually very nice and caring individuals. Additionally, the parents work as an character alibi towards a certain important character in the story, defending the person due to their natural disposition.

Honoka still is wrapping her head around her feelings towards Koremitsu, and it doesn’t help that Koremitsu had recently fell in love with Yu, chased after Aoi, and is deemed a lolicon (through misunderstandings, again.) But these two are continuing to build on their relationship in terms of visual appeal and trust.

Honoka Shikibu trying her hardest to make Koremitsu horny.

As for the girls, Aoi has started to become more friendly with Koremitsu. While she doesn’t have a big part in this volume, we do get to see a small bit of her power and connections with the light novel’s world, similar to Asa’s influential power. Speaking of Asa, she still remains the same as the past two volumes; an ice queen with unbelievable willpower. However, we do get a foreshadowing on her character in her side story, which will come into play way later.

Happy Aoi and a concerned Honoka.

The artwork still remains the same as the last two volumes, illustrated by Miho Takeoka. While her beginning illustrations are usually very flowery and appealing, for this volume her color selection is a bit tacky; green with colors of light purple and bright reds and yellows. The colors don’t exactly blend well together nicely, at least compared to the previous volumes.

However, there’s one notable picture which displays Takeoka’s talent at drawing very sorrowful expressions and it’s going to be apparent as the story continues, displaying the character’s elegance and expression.

Hikaru’s third volume in the series “Waka Murasaki” is a story about innocence from a protection standpoint and also from a justice standpoint. While having more comedic moments than the previous two volumes, the light novel continues to fulfill more promises to these conflicted girls and adds more foreshadowing to future plot points and characters.